


The Black Heir

by tinylime (greeniethewritermouse)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Harry Potter, Bisexual Harry Potter, Blood Magic, Dark Magic, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Female-Centric, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle Attend Hogwarts Together, Harry Potter is the Heir to the House of Black, Heir of Slytherin, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Possessive Tom Riddle, Powerful Harry, Pureblood Culture (Harry Potter), Pureblood Politics (Harry Potter), Pureblood Society (Harry Potter), Sane Tom Riddle, Slytherin Harry Potter, Time Travel, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23207968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greeniethewritermouse/pseuds/tinylime
Summary: When Harry Potter runs through the Veil, she does the impossible and comes out on the other side. Unfortunately for her she's promptly caught by the Unspeakables in 1942 and held against her will.There is a way out of a lifetime of imprisonment in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, but it involves sacrificing the life she's built since receiving her Hogwarts letter and re-inventing herself into the kind of person she's always hated.And then, of course, there's Tom Riddle.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 25
Kudos: 354





	1. Chapter 1

During her imprisonment within the Department of Mysteries, Harry Potter had a great deal of time to reflect on her own stupidity.

Sixty-two full days, if her tally count was right.

If storming the Ministry chasing false visions, against all the advice of her friends, had been stupid. Rushing into the strange archway, filled with whispers after Sirius had been even stupider. She was lucky she was alive to be imprisoned.

Harry tried to concentrate on this fact as she went through her hourly ritual of standing, and stretching out each muscle starting with her neck and working her way down to her toes.

A veteran of many unjust confinements, Harry knew that if she didn’t get up and move around at regular intervals, she’d waste away to nothing before she was released.

That being said the Unspeakables made better jailors than the Dursleys. There was a witchlight floating in the confines of a sconce just inside the door that brightened or dimmed with the hour of the day, she received three regular meals at precise intervals. There was a water pitcher and a glass, spelled unbreakable, for drinking, and a basin that filled twice a day with hot water, for washing. Her water pitcher never ran dry, her chamber pot vanished her waste promptly and the pallet on the floor was more comfortable than her cupboard-bed had ever been.

She suspected a great deal of that was thanks to the monitoring of a house-elf, but as she hadn’t seen them, she couldn’t be sure.

She’d slept peacefully nine nights out of ten her nightmares, when they came, blessedly normal and pain free.

If it weren’t for the complete and utter isolation from other beings and the crushing boredom that came with being in a windowless cell without books or paper or her wand Harry might have even said it was relaxing.

As it was, she spent an awful lot of energy figuring out how to use wandless magic to make her tally marks on the far wall of her cell. Once she’d figured that out, she’d begun work on levitation and summoning spells. Just simple things that she’d seen adult witches and wizards do easily and thoughtlessly.

It was all much harder than it looked not because it required a lot of power but because it required a lot of focus. Mental discipline.

Wouldn’t Snape be so proud if he could see how far she’d come. 

Harry let out a snort, that sounded too harsh and too loud in the silence of her cell.

If Snape had thought that locking her away would have any benefit whatsoever, she had no doubt he’d have left her in an oubliette with nothing but a textbook and her cauldron in first year.

Harry reached down and put her hands on the floor, rocking forward and back on her toes examining her too-long toenails critically and wondering if there was anything that could be done about that, when the door to her cell opened.

Harry startled, badly, and nearly fell over. Reached for a wand that wasn’t there and then finally grabbed the handle of her water pitcher.

It vanished from her hand before she could decide if she wanted to throw it, and two Unspeakables with their faces hidden in the deep shadow of their grey-hooded cloaks took hold of her arms, and frog-marched her, barefoot and squinting, into the hall.

Behind her the door to her cell swung shut, and became indistinguishable from all the other doors in the long hallway. She tried to count how many doors they passed, but she suspected that the hall was enchanted because she lost count every time she reached thirteen, and it took her a long moment to focus again.

Still, eventually they came to the end of the hall, and there was a sensation like being squeezed through a tube, and they appeared in somebody’s office.

“Thank you,” said the somebody behind the desk, an attractive man in his middle-years with dark brown hair going silver at the temples. “You may go.”

Beside her the hooded and cloaked Unspeakables vanished with a sucking-pop.

“Please, sit,” said the man, gesturing to the chairs in front of the imposing blackwood desk.

Gingerly, Harry sat across from the man, very aware of just how grimy she was after sixty-two days without a proper shower or even a cleaning charm.

The man turned to face her, steepling his fingers under his chin and sitting back in his desk chair. He was dressed in the grey robes of an Unspeakable as well, but his were left open over a smart dove-grey suit and a silky looking black cravat.

His shoes were shinier than Draco Bloody Malfoy’s.

He had grey eyes that put her in mind of Snape and those oubliettes she’d just been thinking about. There was something familiar about him, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Something about the eyes…

“You’ve held out rather well, girl,” he said. “Usually I’d expect to see at least some raving after two months without human contact.”

“So sorry to disappoint,” said Harry, before she could think better of it.

Her voice was a jagged rasp, not nearly as sharp as she’d been hoping.

The man flicked his wand absently and a tea tray appeared at her elbow.

A cuppa sounded fabulous right about then, but Harry knew better than to reach for it.

The man seemed amused, in a distant way, almost fond, but not quite.

“If I wanted you dead, young miss, I certainly wouldn’t need to stoop to poison in your tea,” he said.

“Yes sir,” agreed Harry.

She didn’t reach for the tea set.

For a long moment she and the man stared at each other.

“Your case is a curious one,” he said, after a long moment. “Not a single person has ever come through from beyond the Veil, alive or dead. Those who pass through from this side, vanish, become a whispering voice, the kind you can’t quite make out. You know the kind I mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

The man gave a small but supremely self-satisfied smirk.

“I thought you just might.”

Harry didn’t know what to make of this man, this Unspeakable. Her instincts said he was dangerous, not to be trusted, but he seemed very pleased by her chilly reception to his cryptic remarks.

All in all, quite the odd duck.

“Sir,” she said, feeling like it was time for a bit of daring. “If you don’t mind, I am not so desperate for entertainment that I need you to beat around the bush all day. What exactly is going to be done with me?”

“Well, that entirely depends on you,” he said. “You are less than a ghost in this world, I could keep you here forever, and no one would bat an eye. In fact, some of the gentlemen in research and development insist that I use this opportunity to provide them a chance at human trials.”

Harry fought the urge to finch.

“Of course, I told them no,” said the man, chuckling a bit. “A girl who can walk through the Veil of Death unharmed is not likely to provide an actionable set of baseline data. No, you may be relieved to know that I have decided to set you loose on society, provided you can agree to a few simple conditions.”

Harry would have liked to tell him where he could shove it and demand to be let free on the basis of human bloody decency, but the fact of it was that the last two months had proven that no one was looking for her—otherwise surely Dumbledore would have found her by now—and that he could and probably would keep her locked up for the rest of her natural life if he wanted.

“Name them,” Harry said.

“You are the magical Heir to the House of Black,” said the man. “Just recently come into your own, perhaps, but the inherited magic runs strong and pure through you. I want you to assume that role here, in this world, as well, and swear on your magic that you will not attempt to return to your own beyond the Veil. That you will not attempt to circumvent, in any way, your duty as Heir Black.”

“That’s—”

“Additionally,” continued the man, blithely. “You will bear, in your own womb, the next Heir Black, a witch of suitable power, bloodline and fertility to carry on the legacy.”

“B-bear,” sputtered Harry, flushing.

The man, a Black, Harry was now pretty sure, offered her a look. Something that wasn’t quite pity and wasn’t quite condescension.

“You are a vessel for great power. An unlooked-for chance to see the return to glory for our family, but that is your role. A vessel. You are to carry the power and pass it to the next generation.”

Harry didn’t know how to respond to that. Not at all. Dimly, she recalled Ron mentioning something about Ginny and the family magic. Neville as well.

It was one of those things that purebloods all understood but wasn’t ever written down anywhere in any useful way, not that Harry had ever gone digging for that kind of information. When she wasn’t busy facing Voldemort, she was busy trying to be normal. Just Harry. Neither of those two things had ever required her to consider why purebloods were the way that they were.

It was a little surprising, and possibly related to Voldemort being as half-blooded as she herself was, but for a man who had seduced most of the heirs of old families into his half-baked conquest of the Wizarding World, pureblood culture was not often relevant to his goals.

In any case, Harry had always been more worried about making it to her next birthday in one piece. She’d never considered…bearing, pregnancy, children, or shady inherited magics. Heck, she hadn’t even been sure she’d liked boys as well as girls until just a few months ago.

“I don’t—”

“If you need time to think, of course, your cell will be available to you for as long as you have need of it.”

Harry wished desperately for her wand.

She would feel much, much better if only she had something between her and this smug bastard. Some kind of weapon.

She was a Gryffindor, a woman of action. She didn’t know _how_ to leverage this situation to her advantage with just words.

“What’s your name?” she asked finally, unable to think of anything better to say.

He smiled though, as though he thought she’d done something particularly clever.

Bloody purebloods.

“Arcturus Magnus,” he said, easily.

His chin lifted and his shoulders squared, just slightly, just enough that Harry could notice it.

He was proud then, of his name. But wracking her brain for what she remembered of the Black Family Tree, each Lord or Lady’s name in shining silver instead of gold thread, there hadn’t been an Arcturus as the head. She was sure of it. She’d spent enough time staring at the bloody thing.

After Phineas Nigellus, there was Sirius Aquilanus, then Lycoris Oriana, Cassiopiea Pandora, Charis Thalassa, and finally Walburga Honora, before in quick succession Regulus Arcturus and Sirius Orionis. 

No Arcturus Magnus in that broken line.

Of course, if this was a different world, that might not be true any more but it was the only thing she could think of to say that might put off needing to make this decision.

“You don’t have the authority to make this bargain,” she said, slowly. “You’re not the Lord.”

Arcturus Magnus Black didn’t seem upset by this declaration. In fact, he laughed a little before waving over a roll of parchment sealed with black wax stamped in the Black crest.

“There, girl, your geas, written in my niece’s own hand.”

The seal sparked with static electricity when Harry broke it.

Written in what Harry had a sneaking suspicion was blood, and spiky calligraphy, was a contract positively humming with magic.

It outlined the same terms Arcturus Magnus had stated.

She would abandon all claims to her former family, name and life. Never attempt to return. Act in the best interests of the Black family, as Heir Black and then Lady Black. Bear a strong female heir to a man of suitable power and lineage…etcetera, and so forth…this being a binding and unbreakable agreement on your life and magic you so swear.

It was signed Lycoris Oriana, Lady Black.

It might as well have proclaimed: _abandon all hope, ye who enter here_ , because that was what Harry would be doing if she signed it.

She’d buy her freedom from her little cage in the Department of Mysteries at the cost of ever going home.

She’d never see her friends again. She’d never know what had happened to them in the battle. She’d be abandoning whatever destiny that blasted prophecy she’d stolen had laid out for her. And she suspected that meant letting everyone else, trusting anyone else to, take care of Lord Voldemort.

Of course, if she was confined to the Department of Mysteries for the rest of her natural life, she’d have to do all of those things anyway.

It was a choice that was not a choice.

It was just that she would have felt better spitting in Arcturus Magnus’ smug, annoying face and plotting her escape from inside her bloody cell however long it took.

But.

But.

She was trying not to be stupid.

The last time she’d belligerently tried to do everything herself all she’d done, in the end, was get Sirius killed. Her friends hurt. She’d given Voldemort exactly what he wanted and only smashing the prophecy on the floor at the last moment and the arrival of the Order to clean up her mess had kept him from a total victory.

She’d walked right into Voldemort’s trap, because she thought she knew best.

She might not have been a trained Slytherin, but she didn’t have to charge into this new situation wand blazing either.

What she really needed was more information, and she wasn’t going to get it stuck in her little cell.

“I’ll need a quill,” she said.

If Harry had thought that Arcturus Magnus was smug before it was nothing compared to how smug he was when he took a blood quill wrapped in black silk out of the top drawer of his desk and handed it to her with a courtly flourish.

Harry took it and scrawled her signature on at the bottom, unsurprised at the sting of the quill.

Then, figuring that if she was in for a penny she was in for a pound, she used wandless magic to pour herself that cuppa.

She’d just signed away her life and magic, she certainly deserved one.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry had been very prepared for disaster to strike the second she signed her name on that contract, but it didn’t.

Arcturus Magnus even let her finish her tea before hitting her with several powerful cleaning charms and handing her a dress, a hat, some robes and a set of heels that Harry was dubious about her ability to walk in and left her to change.

Then he’d dragged her through the floo into a Department of the Ministry simple called Records, and handed the smitten witch at the desk there a packet of papers that Harry wasn’t permitted to see and made her prick her thumb for a much more official looking Ministry document.

It was there, craning her neck and squinting that she learned the date from the Ministry witch’s copy of the Daily Prophet.

August 3rd 1942.

She’d have liked to swear, viciously and creatively, at that point but she didn’t think that would go over well.

Fifty-three years in the past, or possibly in another world, Harry really wasn’t clear on that bit, and it didn’t seem like the Unspeakables were either, that was an awfully long time.

It would be another thirty-eight years, give or take, before Ron and Hermione were even born. Hell, it would be another eighteen years before her parents and Sirius were born.

And that was all supposing that all she’d done was a bit of time-travel and she was living fifty years from her own past and that her presence in the timeline didn’t change anything too drastically.

Harry spent several harrowing minutes watching Arcturus produce her wand to be weighed and registered with the Ministry witch and wondering what would happen to her if she inadvertently stopped her parents from being born.

She’d seen first hand how a timeline could be corrected, but hadn’t her first corporeal patronus been cast on the idea that she’d do it because she’d already done it? Didn’t that mean that there was still a causal relationship between a time-traveller’s actions and their own past?

And wasn’t time more of an affectation of society than an actual river or circle or force anyway?

She thought she’d heard that the muggles had figured that out with science.

In any case, she was far too preoccupied to protest or do much more than smile tightly at various Ministry officials as she was dragged hither and thither.

Arcturus returned her wand, once her we through having it registered, and Harry had never been so glad to have it in her hand.

Everything felt more manageable with a wand in her hand.

After all of Arcturus’ errands were complete, they marched arm-in-arm through the Ministry atrium, into the Hall of Fires and apparated away between one breath and the next.

If Harry had been in any state to think about her expectations, she might have realized that she expected to be taken to number twelve Grimmauld Place.

Which was probably why arriving in the weak summer sunshine outside the gates of a castle on a hill was such a shock. It was a small castle, granted, but definitely a castle, with battlements and turrets and everything.

“Welcome to the Black Tower,” Arcturus said.

It was definitely more than a tower, though there was a prominent one, covered in ivy on the north side of the structure.

Harry was forced to hold tightly to his arm to keep herself from slipping in her heels on the gravel drive.

They walked right through the wrought iron gate, which yielded for them in a puff of smoke, and Harry actually felt the wards slide over her before allowing entry.

Merlin help her, they actually felt welcoming.

“You’ve never been here before,” mused Arcturus.

“No.”

“This is one of several properties entailed to the family, there’s a townhouse in London, a chateau in France and a manor house in Austria, but the Tower is traditionally the primary residence of the Lady.”

“The Lady?”

“Yes,” hummed Arcturus, the insufferable, cryptic, close-mouthed bastard.

The doors to the Black Tower swung open before they reached them and swung gently shut behind them once they passed through into the foyer.

The foyer itself was not what she expected either, paneled in walnut or blackwood with a carpet of hunter green it almost looked cozy.

Where were the shrieking portraits? The House Elf heads? The troll legs and cobwebs and strange noises in the walls? Why the bloody hell had Sirius been living at Grimmauld if he could have been living here instead?

Harry let Arcturus take her borrowed coat and hat in a daze and followed him through the house into a sunlit parlour.

“Uncle,” greeted the witch already occupying the room.

She unfolded herself from a wingback chair and she greeted Arcturus the way Harry had occasionally seen the Greengrass sisters greet each other.

Arcturus stood very still, turning his arms palm up and let the woman set her hands in his for a brief moment before she stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. It was all done in one graceful movement and they barely touched before parting.

Arcturus had a smile that might have been described as fond flirting with the corner of his mouth.

“Lycoris,” he said.

“Is this her, then?” she asked, turning to Harry.

“As promised.”

She was also not what Harry had been expecting.

For one thing she was not a tall woman. She was taller than Harry, but that was all that could really be said for her. She had dark hair, and hooded eyes, and milk glass skin, but her eyes were big limpid pools of brown. Pretty and placid as a cow’s.

She was also rather voluptuous.

Rather. Voluptuous.

It could perhaps even be called lush.

A fact that was all too evident when she leaned forward to inspect Harry properly.

Yes, lush seemed like the right word.

Harry reminded herself that staring at the woman’s cleavage was not on and focussed on identifying the exact color of her hair instead. It was a kind of red-brown too rich and too dark to really be called auburn but too red to really count as chocolate.

“Yes,” she said, reaching forward and twisting a frizzy curl of Harry’s hair around one carefully manicured finger. “I can work with this I believe.”

When she let go the curl was a perfectly smooth ringlet.

“How did you—”

“Magic, dear,” she said, patting her hand. “You are a witch after all.”

Harry didn’t bother trying to explain that all the witches of her acquaintance used potions or muggle product and couldn’t neaten their hair with just their magic.

Lycoris was giving her that look that she hated, the one that all purebloods seemed to have perfected. It was half pity, half condescension and it never failed to make Harry’s blood boil when she saw it.

Something of that must have shown on her face because Lycoris laughed, and then linked her arm through Harry’s, flashing her a conspiratorial smile.

“Don’t be like that, sweet girl,” she said. “It’s presumably not your fault that you were raised by, who was it, blood traitors?”

“Muggles,” Harry said shortly.

“Sweet Circe, really?” grimaced Lycoris. “Well, perhaps this will take a bit more work than I thought. I really can’t abide the way the Ministry allows witches of the blood to be raised by muggles.”

“What’s wrong with muggles?” Harry snapped.

“Nothing, nothing, sweet girl,” said Lycoris. “Of course, they are exactly as they should be. We have a small muggle village that tithed to the Tower in the old days, you know. It’s is charmingly quaint.”

Harry was sure there was an insult tucked away somewhere, but she was familiar with the range of attitudes towards muggles that the purebloods sported and being utterly unconcerned with them was at least better than hunting them for sport.

Lycoris led her over to the loveseat and settled them into it in another graceful movement.

Harry was glad she was stronger than she looked because without her support she definitely would have toppled straight over and upset the coffee table.

It was only once she was seated that she noticed that Arcturus was still standing, well, lounging, indolently, against the doorframe. And the only reason she noticed that was because Lycoris gave him a dismissive once-over and said: “You may go, Uncle. I’ll send word if I have further need of you.”

And Arcturus Magnus, left.

He dipped his head, murmured, “Ladies,” and walked straight out.

If anyone had had the nerve to try and dismiss Draco Malfoy, he’d have thrown a small fit and stormed off to pen a note demanding that Lucius ruin them for three generations.

Arcturus didn’t strike Harry as being any less proud or arrogant, though he could certainly manage his own feats of ruination, but the bastard left gracefully.

For the first time Harry took a moment to really wonder just what in the name of Merlin she’d gotten herself into.

“Now then,” said Lycoris, a bit more briskly, presumably now that they were out from under the male gaze. “I assume given your general demeanour and vacant expression that you’ve no idea what you are doing.”

Harry opened her mouth but was waved off.

“No, please, don’t bother prevaricating, I haven’t the time or the patience for outrage or excuses,” she said. “The family was given an unprecedented opportunity when you came through the veil. A fertile daughter of the blood, already named the Heir. You are worth your weight in gold, dear girl, and I have twenty-eight days to teach you to start acting like it.”

Harry didn’t really get it but she nodded anyway.

She was surprised when she was smacked on the back of the wrist herd enough to sting.

“No, wrong,” said Lycoris. “When you need information and you don’t want to be caught asking for it you manipulate the situation so that you no longer seem like you are at a disadvantage by asking. Condescension works wonders here, you should learn it.”

Harry didn’t know what her face was doing but Lycoris hummed in approval.

“Yes, like that, but with a bit less sulfur.”

“I don’t mean to be blunt,” Harry said, trying and mostly failing to keep a rein on her temper. “But I thought you didn’t have time to run me in circles for your own amusement.”

Lycoris smiled.

“Oh, I always have time for that, sweet girl,” she said. “However, I do take your point. Ask your questions, then. I already know you’re painfully ignorant so there’s no sense trying to conceal it.”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, why the bloody hell are you doing this? What exactly am I meant to be doing here?”

“Both appropriate questions,” said Lycoris.

With a wave of her hand she summoned a sheaf of parchment and handed the first sheet over to Harry.

It was a genealogy. Harry’s genealogy, if the name at the bottom of the chart was any indicator.

But it was weird, because, according to the chart, Harry had three parents.

Lily Marie Evans Potter and James Fleamont Potter were bunched up together on the one side, and on the other was Sirius’ name.

“Praise be to Sirius Orionis,” said Lycoris, tapping the parchment. “He really was quite clever. Blood adoptions almost never work but when they do, well, you can see for yourself. Magically speaking, you are as much his child as your parents’. It must have been done directly after you were born. How he convinced the Potter Heir is truly beyond me, but however it happened he did a splendid job of it.”

“Sirius and my dad were best friends,” Harry said woodenly. “Like brothers, apparently. You never saw one without the other.”

“Intriguing,” said Lycoris. “Well, when Arcturus caught you, he went to take down your magical signature and figure out your name and he saw this. And he brought it to me. What do you know of the origin of magic?”

“I’m sorry? The origin?”

“Nothing then, I might have guessed,” said Lycoris. “It is a legend of a legend, of course, but the story goes that ten thousand years ago one-hundred mundane women were offered the gift of magic if they would lay down with the Horned God and bear him a child. Seventy-two of those hundred bore mundane sons. Twenty-eight bore magical daughters.”

“The Sacred Twenty-Eight,” Harry murmured.

Lycoris wrinkled her nose.

“I’ve always hated that term, it’s such a modern affectation,” she said. “But yes, the daughters of those first witches became Heir to their mothers’ power, and that power was passed down from mother to daughter in unbroken line for centuries. Eventually brothers were born with the same gifts as their sister and family lines began to blur as the blood intermingled. And then came the backwards muggle idea of patriarchy. Now you hear the heirs to the Ancient and Noble Houses preaching about their lineages, even my own father, but the family magic still passes from mother to daughter. The more generations removed from the last female Heir the more the magic dissipates, and then you begin to see squibs dotting the branches of your family tree.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” said Harry sarcastically.

Lycoris lifted one dark brow, “Would you care to be a mundane girl born to magical parents, to have magical siblings? At best you would be a pitiable sort of cripple in your own home unable to bypass the wards, light the lanterns or stove, access the old libraries safely.”

Harry could admit she hadn’t really thought of it that way.

Grimmauld had truly been annoying because you had to fetch an adult just to put on a pot of tea, and Harry knew better than some just why Filch was always so crusty and bitter.

“Mudbloods on the other hand,” Lycoris said. “Are just the opposite. A dim spark of magic in their blood finding hold when the descendants of squibs marry and produce a child. An accident of fate that gifts them personal magics and raises them up above their muggle parentage, though only just. They are still, of course, utterly uncultured and often have truly nonsensical ideas.”

Lycoris shook her head as though muggleborns were truly just too bewildering to contemplate.

“But what does that have to do with me?” Harry asked.

“Well, not to put to fine a point on it, it was this that secured your freedom.”

Lycoris settled another sheet of parchment over the genealogy chart.

“It’s a fertility assessment,” she said. “A positive one.”

Harry fought the urge to blush up the roots of her hair.

“Why exactly is my fertility such a hot topic with the house of Black?” she said.

Lycoris paused, gathering her thoughts.

“The family has gone to outrageous lengths to keep the family magic, for a number of generations we married brother to sister, cousin to cousin, aunt to nephew, that sort of thing. But breeding between close relatives for multiple generations causes…problems,” Lycoris said. “Shorter lifespans, weaker minds…infertility.”

“You can’t have children,” Harry guessed.

Lycoris gave a tight nod.

“I was assessed at my first bleeding, and it was deemed impossible, of course I did everything in my power to reverse it, but no potion, ritual, rite or spell will ever give me a child of my body. I am a second-generation Heir, my father inherited it from his aunt and it passed to me when I was quite young, but when I die it will pass along again. Breaking the line again.”

She sighed heavily, “My uncle Cygnus Crassus is dying of a wasting illness, his wife bore a squib child, and his elder daughter Cassiopeia is as barren as I am. Her sister Dorea has already married out of the family, as have all of Arcturus’ children. Lucretia, Circe help her, has been engaged to Ignatius Prewett, the silly child. Which leaves another jagged broken line until we reach Walburga. And as we can see plainly from your genealogy, she will marry poor Orion and bear only sons.”

“So how exactly am I fixing any of that?” Harry asked.

“Think girl,” Lycoris admonished. “You are already Heir Black, that doesn’t vanish simply because you aren’t where you’re meant to be. It’s as much a part of your magical signature here as it was in your world. When it comes time for the power to pass it will therefore pass to you, easily and automatically, and then your child. An unbroken line, and fresh blood to invigorate the dying branches of the family tree.”

“A vessel for the power,” Harry murmured.

“You are fortunate that we had need of such a vessel,” Lycoris said. “Who else but Arcturus could seamlessly give you a new identity? No one. Two short months of confinement, and a month with me for comportment, and you will be back to Hogwarts come September first.”

“Wait, was that what he was doing the whole time we were running around the Ministry?”

“Yes, of course,” said Lycoris. “You didn’t think you could run about as Harriet Potter, did you?”

Harry had been thinking that actually, but she wasn’t about to admit to that now.

“Dear girl, you can’t possibly be that naïve, if the world knew who you really were, what you’d done, you’d be locked away for study, killed outright or marched right back through the Veil from whence you came. And I wouldn’t count on being able to survive that trip a second time.”

Harry realized that the contrary urge to try her luck was a stupid one, but this wasn’t the first time she’d done something people had called impossible and with her luck it wouldn’t be the last.

She held that knowledge close as she stared Lycoris Black down.

The witch was unfazed, but she did offer her a genuine smile that crinkled up the corners of her eyes.

“You have a strong will,” she said. “That is good. And power, even better. What you lack now is only poise and polish and that can be taught. Will be taught. It will go much easier for you if you don’t fight me at every turn. You did, after all, agree to this.”

Harry took a deep breath and flicked her eyes down, back to the parchments clenched in her hand.

“Good girl,” said Lycoris.

“So, who am I meant to be then, if I’m not Harry Potter?”

“Welcome to the family, Aurora Gloriana.”

“A glorious new dawn?” said Harry.

“Fitting, no?”

Harry thought it was a little on-the-nose but what did she know, the last time she’d tried to use a fake name she’d been Nellie Longbottom.


End file.
